New study raises Iraq death toll

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Nearly 40,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of
combat or armed violence since the US-led invasion. It is a figure
considerably higher than previous estimates, a Swiss institute
reported yesterday.

The public database Iraqi Body Count, by comparison, estimates
that between 22,787 and 25,814 Iraqi civilians have died since the
March 2003 invasion, based on reports from at least two media
sources.

No official estimates of Iraqi casualties from the war have been
issued, although military deaths in the US-led coalition forces are
closely tracked and now total 1937.

The new estimate of more than 39,000 was made by the
Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies and
published in its latest annual small arms survey.

It builds on a study published in The Lancet, a British
medical journal, last October that said there had been 100,000
"excess deaths" in Iraq from all causes since March 2003.

The Swiss institute said it arrived at its estimate of Iraqi
deaths resulting solely from combat or armed violence by
re-examining the data gathered for the Lancet study and
classifying, when it could, the cause of death.

Its 2005 small arms survey finds that conflict deaths from small
arms have been vastly under-reported in the past, not just in Iraq
but around the world.

The number of direct victims of such weapons was likely to have
totalled 80,000 to 108,000 during 2003, compared to earlier
estimates by other researchers of 27,000 to 51,000 deaths that
year.

The under-counting is due mainly to a lack of hard data and an
over-reliance by analysts on estimates based on government and
media accounts of wars, which were often inaccurate. The number of
indirect deaths around the world that can be blamed on small arms
has also been underestimated, as these types of weapons typically
trigger significant social disruption that leads to secondary
causes of death, according to the survey.

Depending on the nature of the conflict, small arms caused
between 60 per cent and 90 per cent of all direct war deaths, the
study said.

Despite billions of dollars of improvements, thousands of
jammers and tonnes of armour plate, the so-called improvised
explosive devices in Iraq killed more Americans in May and June
than in any previous months, US military figures show. Attacks in
May alone reached 700, and the roadside bombs, car bombs and other
devices are now the cause of more than half of US casualties in
Iraq.

Another US soldier died of injuries he received when his vehicle
hit a landmine west of Baghdad, the US military said yesterday.
Iraqi insurgents killed 11 soldiers on Monday following a spate of
seven suicide bombings on Sunday that killed at least 34
people.